Skyrim: We Warriors of Talos
by xI Blackfyre Ix
Summary: Eirik Thornviir is a barman who has never left Whiterun Hold. However his fate has already been decided by the Gods and after running into the mysterious Imperial, Mhairi Andelliar, he begins an adventure that will shape the very future of Tamriel. Loyalties will be tested and broken, legends will fight and fall as Eirik and Mhairi are swept up in events beyond their control.


**A/N: Welcome to my new story! Some of you may have read my others (still in progress) so if not feel free to check them out :) Anyway, I hope you enjoy and comments and review are always welcome :)**

**Disclaimer: I do not own the Elder Scrolls universe or any of its characters other than those of my creation.**

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><p>Chapter I<p>

Eirik was tired.

He'd felt that way for a long time now and he was sure it had nothing to do with the amount of work he was doing. Not that he hadn't been working brutally long shifts at _The Sleeping Giant_ recently. Delphine seemed to take a bitter sort of amusement at watching him scurry around the Inn, washing tables and serving the food, and when Orgnar was feeling lazy – which seemed to be most of the time – even pouring the ale; but the money was decent so he rarely complained. No, this was a different kind of tired, not one that affected the limbs but instead the soul; he was restless.

Putting his calloused hands on his hips Eirik stretched his weary body. The satisfying sound of his young bones clicking in a sweeping crescendo running up his spine brought a contented smile to his lips.

"Eirik!"

From his place behind the smartly constructed bar he flicked his muddy green eyes towards the figure on his left. Emerging from her private room, Delphine, the slender, fifty-something owner of Riverwood's only inn, appeared to be in her usual prickly mood.

"Please tell me you haven't just been standing there doing nothing? Have you changed the barrel of ale that I asked you to do this morning?" She demanded of the young Nord, her fierce gaze boring into his skull.

"Aye, I did it an hour ago," he replied as he absently dunked a cloth into a small wooden bowl of semi-clean water. "I also put a fresh barrel of ale on the rack, it should be ready to tap by the end of my shift this evening."

Delphine nodded as she watched him calmly wash the surface of the bar, his muscled arms working in slow, deliberate circular motions as he weaned the spilt beer and mead from the thick oak.

The inn was quiet for the moment. in fact truth be told, it had been quiet for some months now. The Stormcloak Rebellion in the East was beginning to take its toll even here and Delphine wondered how much longer she would be able to afford to keep the boy on. She called him boy because that's what he'd always been to her.

'_But at twenty years old I need to start thinking of him as he in; a man,' _she admitted to herself as she wandered back into the depths of her room, happy to let him mind the bar while she continued her plans.

Eirik watched her go. He often wondered to himself how she could easily spend hours on end in there without going completely mad.

'_Surely there's not that much to do in there_?' he wondered to himself.

Not that he would dare attempt to find out.

The only other person whom Delphine allowed into her quarters was Orgnar and Eirik was reluctant to guess as to why. Once, when he was much younger, Sven, his older brother, had bet him a sweet roll that he couldn't sneak in and out with something of hers. He'd managed to make it as far as the foot of her bed by the time he was caught and the ensuing beating had left enough of an impression that he had not attempted anything since.

The door creaked open as the light from the crackling logs in the central hearth danced around the rafters of the old timber and thatch building. Eirik looked up to see Alvor, the village blacksmith stride in, followed closely by siblings Lucan and Camilla Valerius; owners of the village trading station.

Alvor, his sturdy face and pale beard still painted with the smoke of his forge occupied his usual stool next to the hearth; something that surprised Eirik given the amount of time he spent working with flames. Knowing the blacksmiths' fondness for the locally produced Honningbrew mead he grabbed a bottle from under the counter and took it over as the Valerius siblings settled themselves on the bench opposite the entrance.

"Ah, good man!" grinned Alvor as he spied Eirik approaching. Dusting off his hands onto his equally dusty tunic he accepted the proffered bottle and took a long, hearty swig. "That's the stuff."

"Shall I add that to your tab?" Asked Eirik knowing that he was likely to stay for the majority of the evening.

"Aye if you would, Sigrid should be along later once she's put Dorthe to bed."

Eirik raised an eyebrow.

"Aren't you worried someone might break in?" he asked.

Alvor chuckled.

"In this village?" he said, an eyebrow raised of his own. "I think we both know she'll be just fine," he finished as he leaned back in his chair, happy to stare into the embers and wait for his wife.

It was certainly true that Riverwood was a quiet place, even more so since the fighting had started '_I suppose he makes a good point_,' Eirik conceded as he made his way back to the bar.

"Evening Eirik," Camilla greeted him in her soft Cyrodilic accent, a smile playing on her lips. Like all the males in Riverwood, his older brother chief amongst them, Eirik Thornviir was in love with the Imperial woman, and had been since he could remember.

As if on cue, Sven walked into the inn, his cedar wood flute in one hand and beloved lyre trailing behind him in the other. He spotted his brother and Camilla at the bar but instead headed towards Lucan, _'Obviously ready to ambush Camilla on her way back_,' Eirik thought bitterly.

Not that it mattered much, everyone knew that in the race for her affections it was the Wood Elf, Faendal - who worked at the saw mill by day and as a huntsman by night - who was easily leading the pack. Occasionally, the elf would bring back a leg of goat to cook over the hearth in the tavern, an act which was always popular and as Delphine reminded him never did trade any harm.

"Come to watch my brother play have you?" Eirik asked as he reached for a bottle of Alto wine, a carafe and several of the polished silver goblets that Lucan had purposely left here for whenever he came by.

Camilla laughed as she watched him pour out the dark red liquid, its contents splashing at the side of the vessels.

"How could I miss it?" she replied, Eirik sensed sarcasm but with her it was always hard to tell. "Or maybe," she continued, trailing a delicate finger along the ridge of his knuckles, "I came to see you."

Eirik knew she was only teasing, but he still couldn't help the heat rushing from his body to his face like a pack of starved dogs chasing game. He ran a hand through his thick, dark brown hair and tried to ignore the visible wobble in his hand as he finished pouring the wine.

"Come now Camilla," called a gratingly familiar voice, "the boy is here to work, it's us who should be having the fun."

Eirik smirked as she winked at him and rolled her eyes before turning to face Sven's lecherous grin. Ignoring his younger brother and wasting no time he wrapped an arm around her waist, scooped up the tray of wine and made off towards the table where Lucan, whose company was now supplemented by the arrival of Hod and Gerdur, who owned the mill on the west side of the village next to the river and whose family had founded Riverwood generations ago; making them the closest thing the small village had to royalty.

An audible crack of thunder and the whistling of a surging wind was the only indication that a storm was in full swing. Eirik suspected that it was accompanied by a driving rain judging from the state of Hod and Gerdur's clothes. The sight of the hearth's flames beginning to dwindle to a dull ember was a constant reminder that he would shortly have to brave the elements and collect more firewood from the inn's spacious front porch.

Outside was pitch black, save for the occasional burst of lightening that illuminated the surrounding clouds. The usual row of torches along the sides of the buildings heading north had been extinguished by the rain, now coming down in full force and creating a south-flowing stream running down the centre of the street and pooling just outside the inn where a dip in the beaten earth had formed over time.

Eirik felt uneasy as he firmly closed the door, a half-hearted attempt to keep in the heat. Rubbing his hands together vigorously, he jogged along the porch, the sound of his footsteps masked by the beating rain.

Had the rain not been obscuring his senses he would have heard the distinctive sound of a sword being drawn from its scabbard, indeed his body was so numb from the cold and his now soaked clothes that he barely felt the press of steel between his shoulder blades, it was only a moment later when his assailant spoke up above the din of the elements that he was aware of company.

"How's your sword arm, boy?" called the figure in the dark.

Eirik froze.

"You ought to be more careful, there is a war on you know; anyone could be lurking in the dark," continued the man in his deep, gravelly voice as he used the point of his sharp blade to force the barman to his knees.

Instinctively the young Nord swivelled. Knocking the man's sword away with his right arm, he lunged for the wood pile propped against the wall and grabbed the first piece that came to hand. The rain had soaked through the cover and the sodden log nearly slipped from his grasp as he swung it wildly at the man's knees. In a flash a heavy boot shot out from underneath the attackers long grey cloak and kicked away the slippery log from Eirik's tenuous grasp.

"By the eight, Eirik, stop!" called the attacker, his breath heavy.

Before Eirik had time to react the door to the inn flew open. In what seemed like a mere second, Delphine covered the ground between the entrance and the assailant. A single glint in a flash of lightening was the only indication that she was armed as she tackled her stunned opponent to the ground and held the cold steel over the rusted iron clasp on his throat.

"Who sent you!" she screamed, "How did they find me?"

"What are you on about you mad woman!" the man replied; his teeth gritted in pain as he struggled to free his arms from under Delphine's crushing knees, "This is my home!"

A crowd had gathered by the entrance to the inn through which the blacksmith shouldered his way through to the front. He took only a brief look at Delphine and the crumpled person on the sodden porch before speaking.

"For Talos' sake," Alvor said, inadvertently invoking the name of the outlawed divine, "is this how we treat our soldiers now? Let the poor boy up."

"You know him?" asked Delphine her thin brow slightly furrowed.

"Aye, I bloody should," he said as he roughly pulled the man to his feet, "he's my nephew!"

"Hadvar?" Eirik asked laughing as the hardened warrior pulled back his rain-darkened hood, revealing a mop of auburn-brown hair and a fresh pink scar that ran from the base of his left ear to underneath his cloak.

Hadvar grinned but his hazel eyes remained hard, cold even. They were the eyes of someone who had witnessed the pointlessness and tragedy of death and war.

"I don't wish to sound ungrateful to you mistress, you not having killed me and everything, but it has been too long since I've felt the warmth of a well-stoked fire," he said facing Delphine, her cheeks flushed a deep pink, perhaps from the cold or perhaps from the embarrassment of nearly decapitating one of her most regular customers' kin.

Discreetly concealing her odd-shaped sword behind her back she motioned for everyone to go inside. As Hadvar walked past, however, she stopped him with a strong hand on his shoulder, catching the attention of his uncle. The newcomer indicated with a nod that he should continue on inside.

"Drinks and food are on me tonight," she said levelling her blue-grey eyes with his.

Hadvar nodded, fully understanding that by doing so he was agreeing to never again speak of what transpired that night.

Eirik wasted no time in rushing off to fetch a platter of meat and cheese along with a healthy tankard of mead to warm the belly. Hadvar dragged a stool and joined his uncle at the hearth. Delphine had brought in the logs that had been dropped and quickly rebuilt the fire to an acceptable level before retreating to a dark corner of the room behind where Sven had shamelessly begun attempting to serenade Camilla in front of her very unimpressed brother and an uncomfortable-looking Hod. Gerdur, meanwhile, sat hunched over a table, nibbling absently on a chunk of bread and scowling at Hadvar, her piercing gaze unwavering.

Spying Eirik approaching with enough food and drink to feed a small army, Hadvar cleared a small space on the stone edge of the hearth and invited the barman to join them. After placing the tray on another stool between the three of them, Eirik perched himself as close to the edge of the hearth as he could. The roaring fire behind wasting no time in superheating his dark green tunic, so much so that he was worried the woven wool might catch alight. Hadvar cast a quick glance over his shoulder only to find Gerdur still closely watching him. He leaned in towards the middle and Alvor and Eirik followed suit.

"Has her brother been through here?" Hadvar whispered to them with a subtle flick of his head towards the mill owner.

"Ralof?" Eirik asked, perhaps a bit too loudly as Gerdur shifted in her seat. "Not to my knowledge." Hadvar shot a look towards his uncle, knowing that Eirik had been fond of Ralof when he was younger.

"The boy tells it true, nephew," Alvor grunted, "nobody has seen nor heard from him since he ran off to join that fool regicide Ulfric and his band of rebels." Hadvar nodded before replying.

"I've seen him," Hadvar said simply, "and recently too, only a few days back now."

"Where?" Eirik asked.

"At Helgen."

"Last I heard Helgen was still Imperial territory," Alvor said, "have the Stormcloaks overrun it?"

"We had him, uncle!" Hadvar hissed, ignoring Alvor's question, "Jarl Ulfric! We caught him."

"Is he dead?" Alvor asked, eyes widening.

Hadvar clenched his thawing fist and sighed.

"I'm not sure truth be told. We were attacked before we could execute him and his entourage." He looked away, "Ralof included."

Eirik smiled, but Hadvar shot him a look that made him feel guilty.

He hated that.

He had always liked Ralof as a boy; he had been the only one in the village that seemed to take him seriously despite him and Sven always causing mischief. Their mother Hilde had always too far into her cups to care what her sons got up to.

'_Ralof cared'_, Eirik thought to himself as Alvor and Hadvar conversed.

The day Ralof had ran off to Windhelm, the capital of legendary Ysgramor and the first kings of Skyrim, to join Jarl Ulfric Stormcloak's rebellion against the Empire had been one of the worst in Eirik's life.

Things had been tense even before that. Hadvar had received his commission into the Imperial Army just as his father had before him and everyone expected his blonde haired best friend to do the same.

'_How wrong they were_,' Eirik mused he remembered growing up in a village that from that point on had been divided over loyalty to the Emperor Titus Mede II, or to their homeland province of Skyrim and its self-proclaimed High King who had murdered his predecessor at the Blue Palace in Solitude, young Jarl Torigg. The two had once been considered synonymous but now, in the watchful eyes of both sides, being both was no longer an option.

"What do you mean a dragon?" Alvor roared ripping Eirik from his thoughts.

The inn had suddenly become silent the only noise the occasional cracking of the logs on the fire and the patter of the rain on the thatch.

"You heard me uncle. A dragon descended on Helgen and burnt it to the ground!" Hadvar rose to his feet.

"So mother was right," Sven spoke up from the corner of the room, "she really did see a dragon fly past, didn't she brother?" Eirik hesitated for a moment.

"She did say that," he conceded carefully, drawing a poignant scowl from his older brother.

"Hadvar must be mad or lying," Gerdur spat, "dragons haven't been seen in Skyrim since the second era."

"Were you there?" Hadvar demanded as he took a step forward only to be matched by Hod who blocked the soldier's path to his wife. "Because I was, and so was your traitor brother! If the gods are good then the dragon made a good meal of him!"

Suddenly the room erupted into a chorus of shouting and swearing. Everyone had risen to their feet, some attempting to calm things down and others only serving to exacerbate them. Eirik remembered how similar this was to the day Ralof left as he pushed his hand on Alvor's pommel, preventing him from drawing the fine iron blade. Out of the corner of his eye he spotted Sven hustling Lucan and Camilla outside; them being the only Imperials in the village everybody knew that this was not their fight.

"Enough!"

Everyone paused. From her place in the corner of her room Delphine had climbed onto one of the sturdy wooden tables and now all turned and faced her.

"This is my inn and you will not desecrate it with your petty squabbles." Her eyes searched the faces of her patrons; none would meet her gaze. "I believe Hadvar's word and no doubt soon the word of others,"

"So you should," Hadvar barked, "so you all should! Last I saw…it was coming this way."

"Has the Jarl been informed?" Asked Hod.

"Yes," his wife continued, "maybe he could help us?"

"I don't see how," Hadvar replied quietly, "Unless anyone else made it out, or worse still, another attack has occurred then word will likely not have reached him."

Alvor turned to his nephew, placing a firm hand on his mailed shoulder he spoke.

"Then you must tell him, and soon. Who knows what might happen if we delay any longer."

"Alas, uncle, I cannot," Hadvar sighed, "Whiterun is the only hold in Skyrim that has maintained its neutrality in this war, and Jarl Balgruuf may suspect a trick, or worse yet he may believe it and decide that siding with Ulfric is the best course…assuming he still lives."

Delphine nodded knowing that all the Jarl would see in Hadvar would be the Imperial crimson of his tunic and not the real danger. Out of the corner of her eye she spotted Eirik shift on his feet and a plan began to mould itself in her head.

"Perhaps Eirik should go," she suggested.

Eirik was taken aback.

"Why me?" he asked.

"Well, you don't fight for either army and you're from Whiterun hold itself. Also, I've seen you fight and you're not a half bad swordsman," she answered smirking.

"I'd hardly call sparing with my brother a testament to any potential skill," he scoffed.

"Oh I'd disagree with that," Hod chipped in, "and don't think we haven't noticed you and Faendal shooting at the straw targets by his house – you're good lad. No. More than good I'd say."

Eirik attempted to argue further, about his responsibilities, about leaving his family, but something tugged at him. In truth, he knew that the prospect excited him. Something that he had been lacking for far too long and as such any further well-reasoned arguments dissipated as he found himself agreeing to it; not without a slight smirk either.

"So it's decided then," Hadvar announced.

The stocky man slapped a hand on Eirik's back, a broad grin on his handsome face,

"You'd better eat well and say any goodbye's," he said seriously, "you leave tomorrow."

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><p><strong>Hope you enjoyed! As I am a student I can't promise regular chapters so please be patient but know that I have no intention of not continuing any of my stories :)<strong>


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